Random Cards Were The Only Reason AST Felt Good/Different

[Zaytex]

Yeah but old cards provided nothing of that. You either got the good cards, or you "busted". There was nothing else, as nothing of the combat system was built to accomodate the "lesser" options. And since the fights weren't balanced to work with randomized card draws - and don't get me wrong, I love randomness in MMORPG classes - it just had no purpose.

Plus, let's not forget: It was the community who boo'd random cards off the stage, utterly and consistently despising it at every corner. All SQEX did was listen to their community, and that's why we're here now: Where every job is neutered, tanks defend themselves, healer DPS is 1-button-only and no randomness anywhere while all fights and jobs are built around a 120s cycle for burst purposes.

As much as I hate to say it, you're right. Just look at any recent AST thread on reddit about the rework and one of the top pieces of feedback given is ''thank god they removed astrodyne'' or ''I'm so glad I have a second charge of Lightspeed'' or ''I'm happy for the RNG to be deleted''

This community will bitch and moan about homogenisation, yet are a primary influence for why jobs in this game get simplified so much. People just couldn't accept AST was different from the other healers and if you disliked the concept of playing around RNG in your toolkit and having to actually fucking think about your movement mechanics (AST's only former weakness), apparently just picking one of the other three healers wasn't enough. Clearly there was enough negative feedback about ShB/EW AST that led to what we currently have. Now look what's happened:

''I hate card RNG'' = now cards are no different than generic cooldowns, fucking boring and uninteresting gameplay. A Bole is no different than an aquaveil now.

''I want utility cards back'' = we've returned to the HW/SB issue of fishing (or in DT, overwriting) for DPS cards ASAP.

''I hate astrodyne'' = now we have no seal system and less form of kit interaction, in a game where jobs desperately need more of it.

''give us a second lightspeed'' = now AST has the most broken movement out of the healers and any former skill in took in EW to plan your movement is gone. Just press a button and it's done for you, fuck having to learn how to mitigate and play around a job's weakness right? Just let the game do it for you.

So here we are, the most dog shit version of AST ever seen. See you guys in 8.0 where we go back to every card being balance but it'll be somehow done x10 worse than ShB/EW.

[IDontPetLalas]

Not that Reddit is necessarily an authority, however as someone who also has read numerous threads- nope, recent threads would disagree. Here's an example - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...at_we_have_it/. In this thread you'll get a popular post that would seem to agree with you, however multiple posts (less popular, but still 20 plus upvotes each) https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ption_here_is/ or this thread that is more positive towards RNG https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ey_ruined_ast/

There was NO consensus about RNG, some comments were likely from novice and veteran ASTs, or players that preferred as specific rework. Some players didn't understand how astrodyne worked, or its benefits, so that could have affected their opinion.

Blaming this on the players is not only non-productive, it's wrong, given (1) the lack of interaction between SE and its healer community (2) the lack of any way that players can interact with or provide feedback to healer changes prior to go-live (3) the glacial pace at which SE reacts to healer job design changes once they do go-live.

[Ramiee]

I wasn't the biggest fan of Astrodyne either but it was at least dynamic. There's a lot of actions I don't like in jobs such as Dissipation and Double Down but I can accept not liking things but not demanding then to be removed.
It seems a lot of players can't handle this concept.

[Sylvain]

Basically I think the RNG elements of Astrologian actually fit very well with the lore of ‘mages that foresee what’s to come (and guide people accordingly). Honestly I’d say the biggest thing missing is the time manipulation abilities like Time Dilation and old Celestial Opposition. Gameplay wise it gives the Astrologian more ways to adjust things to their advantage whilst making card usage less of a passive experience, whilst lore wise it would reflect how the Astrologian uses their abilities to influence events they’ve foreseen.

Time Dilatation was fun, the issue imo lies in that as per usual, it would only be used to enhance damage which makes the ability not fun.
If it's to add 10-15s to the melee card every 2min, I don't want it back.

However, if Time Dilatation would instead affect other buffs such as Horoscope, Macrocosm, Earthly Star and Aspected buff, sure, that'd be neat. Could pull some interesting combination.

[Carighan]

Time Dilatation was fun, the issue imo lies in that as per usual, it would only be used to enhance damage which makes the ability not fun.
If it's to add 10-15s to the melee card every 2min, I don't want it back.

However, if Time Dilatation would instead affect other buffs such as Horoscope, Macrocosm, Earthly Star and Aspected buff, sure, that'd be neat. Could pull some interesting combination.

Yeah that was the core reason the entire design was changed to begin with after all: Beyond ultra-casual play, there was no flexibility or player choice or agency with it anyways.

Now you could argue: Yeah but there isn't now, either! Yes. But that's the point, complexity was reduced at no loss of depth, as the depth was just an illusion before. There was none.

I struggle to think how to re-add something like that. Randomize cards and you back to lucky-vs-busted as only +damage effects matter, everything else is a blank ticket for purposes of non-trivial content. It could maybe work if no +damage cards existed, not even indirectly. Say all +damage is from Divination, and the cards are all support-augmentative only, giving damage reductions, healing boosts, add-shields-to-healing, add-regen-to-healing, etc. Maybe actually a +movemenspeed but even that I could see people use for DPS gain so best not go there. Then it might work, but I also feel plenty players would once again not enjoy that, as effectively the randomness is still neutered then. All cards are "fluff", so it has little importance which you draw.

And that is something more players need to realize I think: You felt that the old random card draws were meaningful because they could make you more or less valuable to your group based on random chance. But this only happened because they impacted damage - the only important metric. So naturally, the very element that led to them being removed for being unbalanceable, the damage gain, is the only part that made them valuable from a nostalgic perspective.

So in other words: Randomness will naturally come with being benched for high-end prog. It has to. Otherwise it's meaningless randomness (we had this, it's called Astrodyne).

[Connor]

So in other words: Randomness will naturally come with being benched for high-end prog. It has to. Otherwise it's meaningless randomness (we had this, it's called Astrodyne).

Uhh, hasn't Astrologian/Scholar been the prime healer comp in ever single raid since forever though? The randomness certainly didn’t bother them then.

It’s also worth mentioning frankly I don’t see the value in balancing content around literally the very top 0.1% of players doing cutting edge high end progression in ultimate. Otherwise you literally get the jobs we have now, and people aren’t exactly happy with them (because their kits are designed for the 0.1% prog content which makes them extremely boring and disproportionate in strength and value in any other content).

Additionally Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition always affected any buffs applied by the Astrologian. Aspected Benefic, CU, Exaltation, cards, shields, would all be increased (assuming it was the same skill as Heavensward)

[Sylvain]

Additionally Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition always affected any buffs applied by the Astrologian. Aspected Benefic, CU, Exaltation, cards, shields, would all be increased (assuming it was the same skill as Heavensward)

I mean you don't have to consider the top end to realise how broken HW/SB cards were.
On a good run you could have half the fight with a 5-10% damage boost. Like that's just beyond bonker when it comes to balance.
The variance was just too high and yet again... 6 cards to only use 3, Spire/Ewer to burn and Balance to be spreaded. The *whole* system was about simply throwing AoE balance (or spear eventually).
Like, I really don't see how this was better than the current system.

Regarding Time Dilatation (in case it was regarding my feedback) i meant I wouldn't mind as long as it only affects those buffs and not the cards. Because if it would then... Just buff the cards duration to 30s because this is exactly how it will be used, to boost the balance/spear to 30s.

[Connor]

quote

Why would they have to be identical values to Heavensward cards? Bards can have a 2% damage buff up for entire fights, and that’s before Radiant Finale and Battle Voice contributions were added. And I’m pretty sure Bards aren’t considered OP right now.

Frankly I don’t see how the current system is any way better either. We went from burning cards for AoE to having them literally just be clones of our pre-existing abilities? Honestly I’d rather have the illusion of choice than no choice whatsoever personally. Not to mention as said above they can just like, adjust the values of Balance etc as necessary. It doesn’t have to be 10% lol

That’s not even going into the fact that the whole ‘balancing’ scapgegoats is kinda the whole reason the jobs are all in the state they’re in. ‘Why have more than 1 card if you’re always going to be using the damage one’ = ‘You literally just get a damage card’ like SB. Which, I mean I guess we could go back to if people really want? Frankly I thought the seal matching thing was even worse than what we have now, but at least they didn’t have that pesky illusion of choice.

I mean, realistically the current cards are pretty much the exact same though? You still only use the damage card . The other two might as well not be there, and most Astrologian’s just throw them at the tank or straight overwrite them to get to the next damage card quicker. I mean, why would anyone bother with them when they already have the corresponding ability in their toolkit? Nobody needs 10% damage reduction twice (Exaltation and Bole), or a 10% healing boost outside of making meme SCH shields (Arrow). Spire is Celestial Intersection in a fake moustache, as if we needed more shields on top of Neutral Sect lol. Ewer and Aspected Benefic result in hilarious levels of overhealing.

There’s also a specific card priority for which dps should always get it that (generally) isn’t context specific (I.e unless they literally stop attacking a VIP/SAM is always best option for melee damage, PIC/BLM for ranged), or you have a party of Summoners and Dancers and just throw it on whoever has the highest HP lol.

So I guess we should just delete cards all together, since it doesn’t matter what they do it’s always going to be the damage card. So why even bother? If we’re gonna optimise literally everything in the game to oblivion we might as well start asking them to delete everything but one single job…that’s the only way you’re ever actually going to achieve ‘balance’; variations will always exist otherwise. Or they could just accept those variations and actively work to mitigate them in times where they become an issue?

[Carighan]

So I guess we should just delete cards all together, since it doesn’t matter what they do it’s always going to be the damage card. So why even bother? If we’re gonna optimise literally everything in the game to oblivion we might as well start asking them to delete everything but one single job…that’s the only way you’re ever actually going to achieve ‘balance’; variations will always exist otherwise. Or they could just accept those variations and actively work to mitigate them in times where they become an issue?

Yes.

Actually.

Sadly.

Plenty MMORPGs have shown that before.

Importantly however, in particular long-lived ones like EQ1 or WoW have also shown how flavour and uniqueness works or doesn't work, and the current system (of all jobs, this is not an AST specific problem) has extremely little job-flavour on a mechanical level (visuals and sound are strong, the latter very strong in many cases). But that's not a problem you can solve on the level of a single job. The combat system and in particular the fight design implies the current setup. Again, sadly, but eh, so be it.

They could add a lot of flavor to jobs, but they'd need to make space for it first. For example, healers are inherently reactionary in other MMORPGs. There's actual damage to heal that is not on a fixed timetable (say constant random hits on random partymembers) and you need to react to that. Such a situation can easily have on healer by more easily able to handle this, in return for having a portion of their healing kit (note that I said healing kit, and only that) be locked behind random chance. You take a portion of the reactionary nature away, in return for making the player also react to the random draw.

That's doable. Easily in fact. Only... for that to work, healers would first need to heal in FFXIV. And that's just a single aspect of where the issues in job design are unsolvable before or without the combat encounter design being reworked. And even then, some things just won't work. Other MMOs have tried things, and they've all universally eventually removed it or trivialized it. Pet classes for example are such a thing, pets always get trivialized into external DoTs/HoTs with fancy graphics at some point, or flat out removed. Do I hate that we lost our two actual pet classes? For sure, old Scholar was my main. Did I fully expect it to eventually happen? Of course, evidence suggests this is a natural lifecycle event for an MMORPG.

So basically... don't do random cards as a design point. If there were space for them to fill in a viable way, they'd be cool, but that space would need to be created, and in particular in FFXIV's design I just cannot see such a tectonic change in combat encounter design happen. Sorry.

[Connor]

in FFXIV's design I just cannot see such a tectonic change in combat encounter design happen. Sorry.

I mean, people said that about caster Bard, and Red Mage Dualcast Raise, and Summoner’s rework, and Dark Knight’s various reworks, Bard’s Shadowbringers release when they tried to make it more like MCH, removal of Cleric Stance, removal of healer DPS abilities…I could probably go on lol. The devs are constantly making decisions that ‘change things up’ beyond what anyone expected, for better and worse. I really don’t think rng cards are that significant a change considering they existed before for several expansions. Again, all they really need to do is change the values to make the cards closer to equal value, either keep Royal Road in the bin so discarding not-Balance cards isn’t 100% priority, make it randomly give the enhanced card effect so AoE balance can’t be fished for.
Hell, they could just delete Balance from the deck and replace it with something actually balance-able? Move the damage buff to Lord/Lady and keep them guaranteed to appear after Draw, now they have free reign to put whatever effects they want on cards because the damage one is consistently applied and thus doesn’t devalue other cards